By Ali Idrissou-Toure
COTONOU, Mar 27 2006 (IPS)

Benin is preparing to swear in a new leader, this after a former head of the West African Development Bank won the second round of presidential elections held earlier this month in the West African country.

Results issued by the National Autonomous Electoral Commission showed that Boni Yayi garnered an overwhelming majority of votes: 74.51 percent. His challenger, attorney Adrien Houngbedji, received only 25.49 percent. This was reportedly the first time a presidential candidate had won by such a large margin.

Over 67 percent of voters participated in the second round of elections, and about 76 percent in the first round.

Without waiting for Benin’s constitutional court to confirm the results, Houngbedji appeared on television moments after the provisional outcome was announced, saying he had already called the 54-year-old Yayi to congratulate him – and express his “sincerest hopes for (Yayi’s) success as president of Benin”.

Yayi is now scheduled to take an oath of office on Apr. 6 to succeed Mathieu Kerekou, who served two five-year terms as Benin’s leader.

The election of Yayi, a political novice, is being seen as a rejection of “politics as usual” in the country, both in the way public affairs are managed and as concerns the behaviour of politicians.

“The people of Benin want change. To accomplish that, they chose an unknown from outside the political class, which it has been left by the wayside. It’s important that the political class think hard about that…” stated Adrien Ahanhanzo-Glele, president of the local chapter of Transparency International, a Berlin-based non-governmental organisation dedicated to fighting corruption.

Now, the hope is that Yayi will avoid appointing members of that selfsame class to his administration.

“With Dr Boni Yayi, we have an historic occasion to retire those who have governed us so fruitlessly over the past 40 years,” said activists in an open letter published on the internet the day before the second round of elections.

Civic leader Roger Gbegnonvi expressed similar sentiments.

“The people democratically carried out their duty. It’s now up to the new president to carry out his, and to carry it out completely. He needs to confirm the people’s desire for change by being as vigilant against an unaccountable political class as he is against plague and cholera,” he noted.

Gbegnonvi also requested the new president to “serve the people who elected him with a clear and precise mission: clean up the Augean stables and get the country going.” Yayi, he added, needs to “boost development without shilly-shallying, with real and ethical change.”

The president-elect has formulated an economic plan to achieve this. The programme aims to hoist Benin into the ranks of emerging economies, accelerating growth. The goal is to have a two-digit growth rate by 2010; the present rate is approximately three percent.

The programme also seeks to “promote true industrialisation based on the processing of raw materials and the development of business-model agriculture, by promoting small- and medium-sized agricultural enterprises, which are non-existent in (the) country.”

In addition, it emphasises the development of micro-finance, fighting poverty – and tackling corruption.

Youth employment, women’s rights, access to medical care, education and training are – in turn – scheduled to receive attention.

“It’s true that Boni Yayi’s program is apt, but the Beninese people will also have to get to work. The new president is not going to be able to straighten out a country whose economy has been moribund for several years all by himself,” Issa Mondi-Mondi, an analyst based in the Beninese financial capital, Cotonou, told IPS.

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